54 years ago today...Disneyland opens to laughing children, crying parents
That's right, Mouseketeers: 54 years ago today, seconds before Disneyland swallowed its first lookee-loos, chain-smoking Uncle Walt took that infamous stroll through Sleeping Beauty Castle (it's Cinderella's joint in Orlando), surveying his "architecture of reassurance" before it went live. Love that picture. This is what he told the throngs (mostly the press) on opening day:
To all who come to this happy place: welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America...with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world..
Since that speech, 515 million people have visited the Anaheim, Calif., park (although that opening day was a major mess -- all Mouse House hell broke loose).
As the Forever Fiancee will tell you with a dramatic eye-roll, I'm an unabashed Disney apologist, from obsessing about Hidden Mickeys to nerding out over Mr. Toad memorabilia. I have no problem with the notion of going to a park and relying not on my own imagination, but someone else's. As the father of two young daughters, I'm often swearing, sweating, bemoaning my fate as I wait 50 minutes for a 30-second Dumbo ride. I get the grotesqueries. I do. And yet, I always return. (For all the FF's mocking, for Father's Day she bought me two drool-worthy books: Designing Disney: Imagineering and the Art of the Show and Walt Disney's Legends of Imagineering and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park.)
To celebrate Disneyland's anniversary, here's the coolest Disney song of all time, brought to you by Phil "Baloo" Harris and those songwriting Sherman Brothers.
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My brother Terry and I were employees at Disneyland on opening day - at ages 9 and 8. We were among the crowd of "newsboys" hawking park newspapers for the guests!
We were actually just a tad too young for the jobs, but we had become friends with the construction management while the park was being built. Our home was about a mile away, and in those days the area around Disneyland was still orange groves and eucalyptus-shaded smaller streets.
The headquarters for construction was an old blue clapboard farmhouse across Ball Road from the park site. We were in there all the time, looking at the blueprints and plans, watching the men come and go, hearing the snorting of heavy construction machinery hidden from view across the road.
So we managed to get an "introduction" and the glorious joy of being inaugural employees at Disneyland! We sold a few papers, but discovered the joys of the arcade games on Main Street, the eerie magnificence of Abe Lincoln (the robotic version) speak from a stage, and the great delights of using departing visitors' discarded extra ride tickets. And the Magic Shop at Sleeping Beauty's Castle - I wept when we moved away a couple of years later, and I had not purchased the incredible machine that turned plain strips of paper into dollar bills!
Topping each "work day" off was a visit to the Carnation Ice Cream Pavilion, of course.
Nice to read someone else's pleasant stories of Disneyland. What a wonderful place to be a kid!
Sean Daly is the pop music critic for the St. Petersburg Times. His CD collection -- from Journey to Dylan, Prince to U2, Public Enemy to Stan Getz -- is much bigger and better than yours.
I have lost all respect for you now , Sean.
Posted by: mockdraught | July 20, 2009 at 04:28 PM
My brother Terry and I were employees at Disneyland on opening day - at ages 9 and 8. We were among the crowd of "newsboys" hawking park newspapers for the guests!
We were actually just a tad too young for the jobs, but we had become friends with the construction management while the park was being built. Our home was about a mile away, and in those days the area around Disneyland was still orange groves and eucalyptus-shaded smaller streets.
The headquarters for construction was an old blue clapboard farmhouse across Ball Road from the park site. We were in there all the time, looking at the blueprints and plans, watching the men come and go, hearing the snorting of heavy construction machinery hidden from view across the road.
So we managed to get an "introduction" and the glorious joy of being inaugural employees at Disneyland! We sold a few papers, but discovered the joys of the arcade games on Main Street, the eerie magnificence of Abe Lincoln (the robotic version) speak from a stage, and the great delights of using departing visitors' discarded extra ride tickets. And the Magic Shop at Sleeping Beauty's Castle - I wept when we moved away a couple of years later, and I had not purchased the incredible machine that turned plain strips of paper into dollar bills!
Topping each "work day" off was a visit to the Carnation Ice Cream Pavilion, of course.
Nice to read someone else's pleasant stories of Disneyland. What a wonderful place to be a kid!
Posted by: Lange Winckler | July 20, 2009 at 02:56 PM
I have so much more respect for you now, Sean.
Great article.
Posted by: Joe Belanger | July 18, 2009 at 10:51 PM
They now have an app for your iphone to tell you how long the wait is at every Disney ride. Add it, you'll like it.
Posted by: A Spy in the House of Mouse | July 17, 2009 at 01:02 PM